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Statement by the Forest Group

(25 September 2024)

After having read the article “A challenging and controversial task: the work of the

Governing Board-appointed Funds and Assets Management Committee” in the Auroville

Today Issue No. 422, in particular Torkil's perspective regarding the Auroville Forest Group,

we would like to include a response in this edition of Auroville Today. Ideally, this rejoinder

would have been published in the same issue, as the article presents a singular viewpoint

and omits important information and facts, however we hadn’t been informed beforehand.

Quoted passage from the interview:

[Alan:]

No doubt, the FAMC has to deal with financial shortfalls as well as abuses. The

question is if it is being done in the best possible way. Your work has resulted in

much pain and social disruption, and the impact has not only been financial but

also social, and this has extended far beyond Auroville. For example, the decision

to cut the foresters’ maintenances resulted in many forest employees from the

villages being laid off. Many of these workers had worked all their lives in Auroville

and they are too old to find other jobs, even though their families rely upon their

income. From a strictly economic point of view there may be too many

maintenances for the amount of forest, but isn’t the financial and social cost of cuts

like these disproportionate?

[Torkil:]

After talking to the government forest department people the conclusion was we need

perhaps

12 - 18 people to steward our forests, whereas more than 100 maintenances

and staff salaries were

being paid. This was because historically the focus was on planting the forest. But that was

many years ago and, like so many other things in Auroville, this situation just ‘froze’ and

was never adapted to the present need. There were a number of attempts to get a meeting

with the Forest Group to discuss this, but they refused, saying they did not want to discuss

any change. A conflict like this has no good ending. The administration was left with only

two options: to surrender or cut the funding, so we cut the money. I don’t think it should

have ended like this. It ended up as a stupid situation, a black and white story, which

nobody wanted.

Firstly we would like to point out that the initial question only hints at the fact that the

GB-appointed FAMC has for the past 15 months refused to release money for the gratuity

payments towards the 60 employed forest workers who had been laid off with a one-week

notice in July 2023. Gratuity payments for employees who have worked at one workplace

for 20+ years are, even if in some cases not a legal, at least an ethical obligation for the

employer.

Secondly, the Forest Group never stated anything in the line that “the group does not want

to discuss any change”, this is entirely fictitious. However this quoted accusation had

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behavior and solidarity will prevail in the City the Earth Needs.

The Forest Group of the Residents’ Assembly of the Auroville Foundation